


If you can't eat it, drink it, smoke it, or snort it

by Largishcat



Series: fuck it [1]
Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Everything Else, Dubiously Consensual Kissing, Due to Jossing, Fighting, Intoxication, M/M, Mild Canon-AU, Sexist Language, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 07:17:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10986084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Largishcat/pseuds/Largishcat
Summary: (Then fuck it.) Mad Sweeney shows up to have a little chat with Shadow about throwing away gifts so carelessly.





	If you can't eat it, drink it, smoke it, or snort it

**Author's Note:**

> Now translated into [Russian](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11093007)! By the wonderful and talented kalathea.
> 
> Set after Shadow's encounter with his newly resurrected wife. Assumes it goes sort of how it went in the book, but with everyone's new and improved TV personalities.
> 
> I listened to [Whip Jamboree](https://myspace.com/shantychoir/music/song/whip-jamboree-46074299-49300154) by the Storm Weather Shanty Choir on repeat while writing this.
> 
> Come freak out about this show with me on [tumblr](http://largishcat.tumblr.com/).
> 
> EDIT: As of episode five, this series is now mildly AU. Shadow isn't arrested directly after seeing Laura, and Laura and Sweeney don't meet right away.

Shadow's lips are still cold where Laura had pressed hers against them. He can still taste grave dirt, and the chemical taste of spray tan. Laura had never been able to get a tan. The best she could do during the hot Indiana summers was a smatter of freckles across her nose, and a nasty sunburn everywhere else. She'd always been pale--  
  
\-- _Fair as a breeze in spring_ , says a voice in Shadow's head that sounds a lot like Mr. Wednesday.  
  
Under the dim motel lights, she hadn't looked dead. Maybe a little sick, but not like a _corpse_. Shadow could almost believe it really all had been a bad dream, some freakish misunderstanding. But then she had touched him, and no, his wife was dead. Is dead. Is dead and walking the streets right now, soil still underneath her fingernails.  
  
What Shadow needs, he decides, is to get fucking drunk. If Wednesday is paying for the room, he can pay for Shadow raiding the mini bar. It's likely the only source of assistance he'll get from Wednesday tonight. The old man more interested in screwing the barely-legal girl from the front desk than helping Shadow process the fact that his wife has _come back from the dead_.  
  
There are six tiny bottles of liquor in the fridge, and Shadow lines them up one the carpet. He sits on the floor with his back propped against the bed. He thinks about switching on the television for white noise, but then he remembers Lucy Ricardo winking at him, groping her own breasts, and thinks better of it. The first miniature bottle is some bright blue liquid, which he doesn't like the look of. He decides to leave that one for last. Picking up the tiny Jack Daniels, he gets to work.  
  
Half an hour later, Shadow has just finished the little blue bottle, which is when someone knocks on the door of his motel room. Perhaps Mr. Wednesday, done with his nights activities, wanting more information on Shadow's undead encounter. Shadow considers that it might be Laura, but somehow he doesn't think he'll be seeing her again for a while.  
  
Levering himself up, Shadow goes to the answer the door.  
  
"Mad Sweeney?" Shadow blinks. Yes, it's definitely Sweeney, listing to one side and glaring like Shadow had either just slept with or murdered his mother.  
  
"You _fucker_ ," Sweeney says by way of a greeting, and pushes past Shadow into the room. Shadow catches a whiff of whiskey and sweat.  
  
"What are you doing here?" Shadow asks warily, closing the door, but not stepping away from it. In case Sweeney had only come to call him a fucker, and would be leaving immediately afterwards.  
  
"Went by your wife's grave, didn't I?" Mad Sweeney says, pacing around the small room. He kicks over Shadow's little line of empty bottles. "And did I find my coin? No, I fucking _didn't_." He jabs his finger at Shadow. " _She_ took it, you bastard, just like you knew she would."  
  
"I didn't--" Shadow protests.  
  
"Aye, you fucking _knew_ and you sent me on a wild goose chase to fucking _Indiana_ anyway."  
  
"Look, I didn't fucking know," Shadow says. "And how did you get here, anyway? How did you know which motel we were staying at?"  
  
"My luck might be a crock of shit right now," Sweeney snarls, "but I've wandered this earth long enough to be able to find what I'm looking for." He sneers at Shadow, then deflates slightly. "Look, why'd you have to give my gift to a corpse? Don't you know its worth?"  
  
_No,_ Shadow doesn't say, _of course I didn't know it was magic fucking coin that could resurrect the dead. And if I had? Hell, I might have still given it to Laura. Wouldn't you? In my situation, wouldn't you?_  
  
"I thought it was just a gold coin," is what he says out loud.  
  
"Aye, that's what it should have been!" Sweeney spins on his heel and starts pacing again. "It should have been just another piece from the horde. Heavy in the pocket and gone by morning. But no, it just had to be the king's coin you threw away like an _idiot_."  
  
"Look, it's not my goddamn fault if you gave me the wrong coin," Shadow snaps.  
  
"But it was you who was too much of a _dumb ass_ to see the worth in what he'd been given!" Sweeney shouts, rounding on him. Shadow's pretty sure there had been a space between dumb and ass, and somehow finds it more insulting that way.  
  
But Mad Sweeney isn't done.  
  
"In fact," he continues, getting up in Shadow's face, "I am convinced you are such a _phenomenal idiot_ I could give you a thousand dollars cold cash, and you'd feed it to a goat thinking it was lettuce! I could give you a fortune in diamonds and rubies and you would piss it away trading for beer! I could give you a map to Llywelyn's lost treasure and you'd wipe your ass with it! I could give you my cock to suck and you'd faint dead away thinking it was a fucking _snake!_ "  
  
" _Look_ ," Shadow says, feeling liquor and anger and confusion and grief and bone- _tiredness_ start to combine into a lethal cocktail in his gut, "I was just getting used to the idea of my wife being dead. Now I'm getting used to the idea of her being some sort of magical zombie. Give me a _fucking_ break, okay?"  
  
"You think I give a _fuck_ what's going on with your _whore of a wife?_ " Mad Sweeney shouts. "My _lucky--_ "  
  
Shadow punches him.  
  
It's a mistake, Shadow knows, and no doubt exactly what Sweeney wants, but he can't bring himself to regret it. Even when Sweeney wipes the blood off his face with the back of his hand, stares at it for a long moment, a glazed look on his face, then launches himself at Shadow with a joyful whoop.  
  
Shadow stumbles back, the force of Sweeney's lunge taking him almost to the wall. He ducks Sweeney's first punch, but catches an elbow to the ear that makes him gasp in pain, retreating further.  
  
He's angry, and sore from the beatings that seem to be a weekly thing in his life now. Christ, he hadn't been in this many fights in _prison_. And he knows he won't be able to keep this up for long. He's too tired, and drunk, and Sweeney has the advantage in sheer, belligerent _crazy_. You could win a lot of fights if you didn't care how much damage you took in the process.  
  
Shadow tries to calm down, clear his head, remember how Sweeney fights.  
  
Aggressive, hard, and too fast for Shadow to get his bearings turns out to be the answer to that. Shadow remembers from that dim, weird bar that it had been almost impossible to get the upper hand back from Sweeney once he'd got it. Knowing that doesn't do him much practical good in the here and now, however. Especially with his reflexes a split-second slower than they would been if he was sober and well-rested.  
  
It's like his game with Czernobog, Shadow thinks. Last time he tried to match Mad Sweeney blow for blow, but Sweeney is taller than him, has a longer reach. If he tries to fight the same fight he did last time, he'll lose.  
  
Shadow gets in close, tries to use his shoulders to knock Sweeney off balance. He gets another lungful of cheap whiskey, male sweat, and something crisp and earthy. Plantlike.  
  
For a long moment it's like trying to push over a brick wall. Finally, Sweeney takes a step back, and it's enough for his heel to catch on the empty miniature bottle of Bombay Sapphire still lying on the floor.  
  
"Fuck!" Sweeney tips over backwards, grabbing onto Shadow's shoulders as falls, sending them both crashing painfully onto the floor.  
  
Shadow ends up on top. Dazedly, Sweeney blinks up at him. Expressions flick over his face. He looks surprised, then confused, then pissed, then frustrated, then resigned.  
  
"Aw, fuck, you see?" He says, letting his hands fall from Shadow's shoulders. They thunk onto the floor on either side of Sweeney's head, like his strings have been cut. He turns his head to the side, mumbling into his own wrist. "That'd never've happened, had I my luck intact."  
  
The fight seems to go out of him, and, for a time, he just lays there lost somewhere in his own crazy mind.  
  
"Mad Sweeney?" Shadow says, carefully. "I'm going to get up off the floor now." Their legs are tangled together in a confusing gnarl, he discovers when he tries to move. "I'm going to need you to let me up."  
  
"Aye, no, don't do that," Sweeney slurs. His hands come up again, to either side of Shadow's face. Shadow tenses, expecting a headbutt. "I ain't ready to really sit down and think about what I've gone and fucking lost yet. Just a wee bit longer?" And he leans up and presses his lips to Shadow's.  
  
There's a moment of disorientation where the moment layers over the memory of Laura kissing him only a few hours earlier. Her lips had been cold as grave dirt. Sweeney's feel like he's running a fever. It's that sensory detail that snaps Shadow back into the present. He tries to jerk back in shock, but Sweeney has a vice grip on his head and he doesn't get far. The grip loosens once Shadow stops trying to pull away, becoming, if not gentle, then not actively painful.  
  
Shadow is still for a long moment, getting increasingly confused as he turns the current situation over in his brain.  
  
Frustrated, Sweeney presses in harder, his beard scraping over Shadow's face. He bites at Shadow's lips until Shadow opens his mouth to tell him to _fucking stop that_. A decision which backfires predictably. Sweeney's tongue snakes it's way into Shadow's mouth, licking away the last traces of formaldehyde and leaving the taste of stale whiskey and cigarettes in its stead.  
  
Shadow catches Sweeney's tongue in his teeth, which gets him a low, approving hum. Once again, not the reaction he was going for.  
  
Somehow, holding Mad Sweeney's tongue between his teeth becomes pressing back against his lips, letting his mouth fall open on purpose this time, letting his weight rest more firmly on Sweeney's chest. Who sighs, and slides his hands down to cup Shadow's jaw. No longer a threatening grip.  
  
Sweeney kisses sloppily, all tongue and teeth and stale spit, but it's the first real kiss Shadow has had in years--without prison guards watching, counting down the minutes until Laura leaves and they can all tell Shadow what a _hot_ little piece of ass his wife is--and it's good.  
  
How would Laura feel if she knew he was kissing some man he'd gotten into a bar fight with once in a dingy hotel room? On the floor? Somehow that makes it more sordid. And Shadow isn't stupid. He knows two drunk and angry men who ended up kissing on the floor will probably end up fucking on it too.  
  
Laura had kissed Robbie in plenty of hotel rooms, probably. Maybe even on the floor, drunk. Laura had been having an affair. Laura was... dead. Kind of.  
  
Really, Shadow didn't want to be left alone with his thoughts any more than Mad Sweeney did.  
  
Fuck it, why not. Shadow gets into it.  
  
He groans into Sweeney's mouth, and he can feel Sweeney's lips curl up into a grin. Shadow feels a hand slid down his chest to curl around his ribcage, the other cups the back of his neck.  
  
It throws Shadow off. Mad Sweeney isn't being gentle with him, exactly, but this is definitely foreplay, not fighting. It's not even especially rough, now that Sweeney has quit biting at him. His hand spans almost the entirety of Shadow's ribs, and that's disorienting too, the fact that he's bigger and broader than Shadow. Shadow isn't used to kissing people bigger than him.  
  
On an intellectual level, it's an interesting experience. Physically, Shadow isn't hard, but he's considering it.  
  
Mad Sweeney surges up, and Shadow leans back on his heels to avoid getting knocked over backwards. Then gets knocked over anyway as Sweeney plants a hand on his chest and shoves. Ending up on his knees between Shadow's sprawled legs, Shadow balanced on his elbows. This is getting closer to actual sex by the second. Starting to smell like it. Musk, sweat, saliva. The tang of arousal.  
  
Laura flits through his mind again, but he wills that thought away like he'd willed the clouds to spit out snow.  
  
Damp, excited heat is beginning to build where he and Sweeney are pressed together, and it's easy to concentrate on that. It's meditative, almost. Nothing in his head but skin.  
  
The angle is off, and they're both wearing to many clothes for Shadow to see if Sweeney is hard. But he feels confident making an educated guess.  
  
"Hey." Shadow cuffs Sweeney clumsily on the shoulder. He gets a glare in response. "Hey, take your shirt off."  
  
"You first, you fucking jackass," Sweeney says, but he sits up, shrugging off his jacket, then his dumb hipster suspenders, then untucking his shirt and pulling it over his head. There is a lot of wiry, red hair on his chest and stomach, and Shadow gives into the impulse to run his fingers over it. He tugs a little and Mad Sweeney hisses.  
  
"I said take it off, _jackass_." Sweeney smacks Shadow's hand, and roughly starts shoving Shadow's t-shirt up his torso--Shadow helps--then there's a lot of sweaty skin pressing together. Sweeney presses hard, open mouthed kisses full of teeth into Shadow's collarbone. Shadow tries to grab Sweeney's ass, but can't quite reach. Which is weird. He ends up dragging the blunt tips of his fingers up Sweeney's back instead, enjoying the texture of his skin, the tiny bumps of moles, and smooth patches of scar tissue.  
  
Sweeney seems to enjoy it too, because he's growling something unintelligible into Shadow's neck, then attacking Shadow's pants like they'd personally insulted him. Possibly, they'd said something assholish about his recently deceased wife.  
  
Shadow leans back on his elbows. Watches, but doesn't help.  
  
Eventually, Sweeney gets his jeans unbuttoned with a triumphant huff. He hooks his fingers under the waistband of Shadow's boxers, tugging them down. He catches Shadow's cock--unequivocally hard now--before it smacks against his stomach, and Shadow can't hep the chocked noise he makes in the back of his throat. Sweeney's hand is hot and rough, and it feels so damn overwhelmingly good to have someone else touching him that the corners of his eyes prickle.  
  
Luckily, Sweeney's too busy using his long fingers to drive Shadow insane to notice anything.  
  
"Ah, _fuck_ ," Shadow says.  
  
"Aye, you see?" Sweeney gestures with his free hand, like he's illustrating a point to an audience. "Even a tragic idiot such as this can have a good idea every once in a while."  
  
"What?" Shadow asks, then notices that Mad Sweeney's set a pocket-sized tub of Vaseline down on the floor. Shadow hadn't seen him reach into his pocket. " _What?_ "  
  
"Not to your liking?" Sweeney asks, pausing.  
  
"No--" More Laura thoughts rise to the surface, despite Shadow's best efforts. When they'd first moved in together, Laura had shown him the full extent of her sex toy collection, which she kept in a cardboard box on the floor of her closet. The box had had "adventure" scrawled on it in sharpie. Shadow thinks that was meant to be ironic, somehow. "No, shit, fine. Why the fuck not?"  
  
"Now _that's_ a bloody great attitude to have," Sweeney laughs, bright and, yep, mad. Completely insane. He kisses Shadow again, quick and hard, the sits back on his heels, and gets to work pulling Shadow's pants all the way down.  
  
Shadow helps this time, lifting his hips and toeing off his shoes. "Why the hell did you have that in your pocket, anyway?" He snorts as Mad Sweeney tries to get the little tub of Vaseline open one-handed. "You come here hoping to get lucky? They got Boy Scouts over in Ireland? Always fucking prepared?"  
  
"Shut the fuck up," Sweeney tells him seriously. He gets the cap unscrewed and Shadow's next comment catches in his throat as Sweeney leans over and takes Shadow's cock in his mouth. After three years of nothing but his own hand and memories, the wet heat of Sweeney's mouth is a shock. He lies still for a long moment, letting his thoughts drift away on the wash of pleasure.  
  
"Hey," Shadow says, patting clumsily at the side of Sweeney's head, "weren't you just talking about me sucking _your_ dick? Funny, huh?"  
  
Sweeney doesn't pull off, but does he flip Shadow off, his middle finger shiny with grease. He sinks further down on Shadow's cock, and drags his slick finger down behind Shadow's balls, teasing his hole. Then pushes inside, in one, long slide. It is, Shadow thinks, letting his head thunk back on the carpet, a pretty clever way of making a point.  
  
Then he doesn't think at all.  
  
It's not perfect. Sweeney's unpracticed, his mouth a little too slack, and he can't get that far down on Shadow's cock. He pushes in a second finger too soon and it's uncomfortable. But, god, it's _sex_ , and it doesn't need to be perfect to have Shadow stifling moans into his fist.  
  
Sweeney pulls off with a pop, and fumbles with his own trousers. Shadow props himself up on an elbow, watching him push his pants down enough to get himself out. He dips his fingers in the Vaseline and smears it over his cock. Shadow sucks in air through his nose, tasting musk and sweat in the back of his throat. It's good. It's dizzying.  
  
It stings a little as Sweeney pushes in, but Shadow doesn't care. He hisses, but the sting fades quickly, and then it's nothing but the blunt heat of being stretched open. Sweeney leans over, bares his teeth at Shadow in something caught halfway between a grin and a threat. Shadow feels his own lips curling back in response.  
  
Crazy asshole. This is what he does. Gets up in Shadow's space until he can't help but react. Reaches past all the careful, polite, avoidance prison and suburban society have drilled into Shadow, right into some ancient well of brutality. Then he beams like a bloody-nosed kid at Christmas.  
  
The joy of it. Violence, _sex_ , animal physicality.  
  
Shadow grabs Sweeney's head and pulls him down, catching Sweeney's bottom lip between his teeth. He buries his hand in Sweeney's hair, tight enough to be painful. It's coarse, almost like an animal's fur.  
  
Sweeney gasps and laughs into his mouth. Short, hard thrusts push them both over the rough carpet. Shadow's back is taking the worst of it, but, again, he can't find it in himself to care.  
  
Shadow bites down viciously, tasting blood, before shoving Sweeney up by the shoulder, creating enough of a gap between them that Shadow can get a hand around his cock.  
  
"Come _on_ ," Shadow says. He strokes himself, trying to get a rhythm around Sweeney's jerky thrusts.  
  
"Yeah, _fuck_ ," Sweeney says, and grabs Shadow by the hips, grip on the edge of painful.  
  
Blood drips from Sweeney's lip onto his chest as he fucks Shadow hard enough Shadow feels it in the back of his throat. Shadow doesn't bother trying to be quiet anymore. No point with the racket Sweeney is making, grunting and panting like there's no tomorrow.  
  
Shadow's stripping his cock fast and hard, but Sweeney still beats him too orgasm. Gritting his teeth and snarling as he thrusts once all the way to the hilt and stills for a long moment. Then he leans back on his heels, panting, sliding out with a disgusting squelch.  
  
Still hard and desperately on edge, Shadow opens his mouth to curse Sweeney out, but doesn't get the chance. Sweeney slaps his hands away and takes him into his mouth again. Shadow comes with Sweeney's thumbs digging into his hipbones, watching the sweaty fall of Sweeney's hair over his forehead.  
  
Afterwards, everything is quiet for a while. Neither of them speak. Too fucked out to move.  
  
Eventually, Shadow braves the three steps it takes to get to the bed, which he collapses on after pulling off his socks. It's there, sprawled on the bed, that it occurs to Shadow that he has several (possibly expired) condoms in his wallet, and it might have been wise to have the stranger he just fucked use one.  
  
Then again, there's nothing he can catch from sex that he wouldn't get from licking blood off someone's teeth. He's pretty sure of that.  
  
Behind him, somewhere in the room, he hears Sweeney get up. He wanders into Shadow's line of vision a minute later, pants and shirt back on and metal cigarette case in one hand. Shadow watches him lazily as he tracks down his boots and socks.  
  
"Hey," Shadow says, voice rough, "how about you show me how you did that coin trick for real now." He expects the annoyed look he gets.  
  
Sweeney rolls his eyes, and tucks a hand-rolled cigarette in the corner of his mouth. "You fuck a man in the arse once, and suddenly he thinks he's entitled to the secrets of the fucking universe."  
  
"Whatever," Shadow says, not really caring. He spreads himself out on the bed, and luxuriates in the post-sex dullness of his thoughts.  
  
"Showed you once already," Sweeney grumbles, stuffing his feet back into his boots. Somehow, Shadow thinks he's bitching more for the sake of it than anything else. Sweeney's scowling around his unlit cigarette, but his shoulders are relaxed, and there's a languorous quality to the way he moves about the room, gathering his things. "Not my fault if you weren't smart enough to pay attention. Always throwing away the things I give you, like a little child using her mother's pearls to play with the cat."  
  
"You got a thing for real weird metaphors, don't you? Is it some kind of fetish? Just been reading too much James Joyce?"  
  
" _You've_ read James Joyce?" Sweeney scoffs.  
  
"Hey, I read," Shadow says, tucking his arm underneath his head, relaxing further into the mattress. He's feeling too mellow to take much offense at Sweeney's tone. "Not much else to do in prison."  
  
"Mmm," Sweeney says. He lets the sound hang in the air. He finishes getting dressed, and lets himself out. He pauses in the doorway, like there's something he wants to say, but he doesn't. He leaves without glancing back.  
  
Shadow lies on the bed as the morning sky gets brighter and the birds start to wake up. He hasn't slept for over twenty-four hours, and he can feel that exhaustion, kind of, but it's distant. Buried under an odd feeling of... rejuvenation. Shadow realizes he feels good. Not mentally or emotionally--obviously, he's still miserable and _so_ fucking confused--but the tiredness is preventing him from feeling it so acutely. He feels a pleasant lethargy in his body. He feels well fucked. And that's the nicest thing that's happened to him in recent memory.  
  
Even if he probably has syphilis now. Should have asked Sweeney about that before he left.  
  
Eventually, it's morning enough that he has no choice but to get up. Despite having the weirdest night of his life, Shadow still has a job to do. And Wednesday will have some new, crazy scheme he needs Shadow's help with. It's almost comforting.  
  
Shadow had read once that people could get used to anything. No matter how ridiculous or abnormal a situation was, it would become routine, through sheer repetition.  Shadow wonders how long it will take him to start taking the new, anomalous state of his life in stride. Maybe he already has.  
  
He gets up and showers. Dries off. Gets dressed. Leaves his room with the vague idea of tracking down some coffee.  
  
He runs into Wednesday--he suspects not entirely by accident--just outside the lobby, where he was hoping to find food.  
  
"Shadow," Wednesday greats him warmly, "a _very_ good morning to you."  
  
"Have a good night?" Shadow asks, remembering the girl in Wednesday's room. That part of last night had been such a _normal_ kind of weird, it had barely registered, sandwiched between Laura and angry leprechauns.  
  
"Oh, yes," Wednesday says, "but not half so good as yours, I suspect." He eyes Shadow for a long moment. Shadow feels uncomfortably like Wednesday is somehow peeling back his skin, taking a peek underneath. "You've been very popular, Shadow. Why here I was reliving my youth with that lovely young lady you met last night, and here you are making me feel like a decrepit old man again. It's been a long time since I had enough _vigor_ to entertain multiple," Wednesday pauses for an innuendo-laden moment, "guests in a night." Shadow winces.  
  
"Uh," he says, awkward.  
  
"Oh, not to worry," Wednesday says, patting Shadow's arm, "I don't resent you for it. Come now, let's see what delectable treats of the _literally_ edible variety this establishment has to offer us." He turns and leads Shadow through the lobby door.  
  
The food is bad, but the coffee is good. Shadow stares into his cup as Wednesday expounds on the nature of faith in modern America, and thinks about cold skin and hot blood.


End file.
